A Case for Culture

FRIDAY 29 MARCH 18.00–19.30

Professor Doris Sommer (Harvard)

Let’s make “Cases for Culture.” We need them now that humanities programs and arts institutions grow limp from lack of commitments, a symptom of general indifference to culture. How do we safeguard the intrinsic value of the arts and humanities when the general public has lost a taste for the unhurried pleasures of doubt and discussion. Cases for culture might offer proactive responses to anxiety about the loss of taste, about exhausted patience, and the corollary waning of sociability. The case method is common in practically every field of academic research, except for the humanities where arts and culture would come into focus.